Beginners FAQ on sausage making, meat curing etc may often be found at the head of each relevant section, but here is the place to ask experienced users for advice if you are still stuck or need more information...we're here to help!

Hello, I don't think I quite got the smell out of the old fridge I have converted into a ferment/cure chamber. It was out in the shop, I gave it a clean with bleach, but had no time to air it out or stuff it with newspapers to get the funk smell out.

That is if the smell is even from the fridge and not the sausages themselves. The fridge was at 20°C and 88% humidity for 3/4 days for the fermentation then dropped to 14°C and 75% humidity.

I have someone at home watching the sausages as I am out at work but getting reports they still smell like socks on day 8. The bleach smell also hung around for first 2 days.

Question is - are the sausages ruined already? Is it safe to move the sausages out put them somewhere as I get the smell out of the fridge when I'm back home in 9 days? This can't be a normal smell.

The recipe is my attempt at Hungarian Kolbasz. I used all the basics like salt, pepper, paprika, curing #2, and I used Bactoferm T-SPX. The recipe is taken from Marianksi's Art of Fermented Sausage making and he calls it Hungarian Dry Cured Sausage. I have 11 lbs hanging.

The fridge does not have a ventilation system yet - door gets opened appx. 2x daily to recycle air.

Things appear to have taken a turn for the worst, apparently. Got a report from home that the sausages simply smell terrible now, like rotting meat. He thinks they have kicked. I won't be able to see them until next Saturday. My grandpa who used to cure sausages in Hungary in the old days said the smell was off, that was during the socks period, before this rotting meat smell.

One thing to note - I didn't use dextrose, I used sucrose. I used extra sucrose because it will take my lactobacillus longer to break it down and metabolize it. I didn't think that would be much of an issue.

It's odd. What are we now, around 10 days in? Irrespective of whether the culture has worked, I'd expect the cure to still be protecting the meat at this early stage. Could the meat have been old when the sausage was made?

I bought two butts, one fresh one frozen. Used the fresh one for the dry cured, it smelled and seemed fine. When the frozen one thawed it had an off smell so I turned it into grilling sausage which was actually delicious.

The mixture for the dry cure was in the fridge for about two days before I added the culture and stuffed it. Everything smelled and seemed fine and I was very sanitary.

Here's something - I used the grinder as the stuffer and it totally pureed my sausage, making it more of a hot dog then a course kolbasz. Can you not dry cure a mush sausage? Maybe this is the reason

The culture has not passed its expiration, and other than when it was shipped, it's been in the freezer the whole time, so I don't think it would've denatured. Who knows though.

I used natural casings by Weston that I bought off amazon... apparently they are getting slimy, which I know is a sign of spoilage bacteria on meat, but I read somewhere else it could've been the beginning of mould growth (I did not add mould).